A Good Day to Hibernate

Animals who hibernate have the right idea about how to pass cold, cloudy, blah days of winter. A toad once lived in the terrarium in my kindergarten room. Someone found this particular toad one fall, captured the hapless little fellow and brought him to me. The children and I put dirt in a large glass […]

I Firmly Resolve…

I firmly resolve and forswear to work hard at sharpening my writing skills by never, ever writing run-on sentences unless they are called for by content of the story or one of the characters steps up and says he is going to say thus and so causing the sentence to become first a paragraph, then […]

Ring Out, Wild Bells!

Ring Out, Wild Bells!

Ring Out, Wild Bells Alfred, Lord Tennyson Ring out the old, ring in the new,    Ring, happy bells, across the snow:    The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. Happy New Year! And, happy birth month to all you wonderful people who were born in January. Your birthstone […]

Taking Hope

A new year is waiting to make its appearance tomorrow. As we look at 2025, I think an important word is “hope.” We all hope for a better year in every aspect of life. Here in the South, we can’t start the New Year without those all-important black-eyed peas.  That particular practice goes back to […]

The January Thaw

The January Thaw

In the days when my grandparents, Levi and Edna Latty, were on their farm at Etta, my grandfather waited for the January thaw, those few January days when winter paused to take a deep breath and remember that spring would soon be on its way. During the January thaw, Pappy would hitch his team of […]

Boxing Day

And now, mail resumes, banks re-open, people go back to work, and I’m grateful for another wonderful Christmas with my family. In many countries, this is Boxing Day, and I don’t mean it’s a time when we put on gloves and solve all our differences with combat. The day after Christmas is a day when […]